Archive - Feb 6, 2009

One of the first major casualties of the hibernation in the NY commercial market is Boston Properties, which announced today after market close that it is suspending construction of what would have been a lovely 39 story glass build

Straight from the mouth of the people who can't wait to pay you back your TARP money (Goldman of course). For what it's worth the masters of the universe have been surprisingly objective lately.

KEY NUMBERS
Nonfarm payrolls -598K in Jan vs. GS -475K, median forecast -540K
Unemployment rate up 0.4 points in Jan to 7.6% vs. GS and median at 7.5%.

Oh no she didn't.

Fitch Ratings-New York-06 February 2009: Fitch Ratings has revised the Rating Outlook on Apollo Investment Corporation's(Apollo) ratings to Negative from Stable as follows:

--Long-term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) 'BBB'; and

--Senior secured debt 'BBB'.

Confirming our expectations that the government's stupid idea of forcing consumers to borrow is, well, stupid, the latest release from the Federal Reserve indicates that consumer credit for December has in fact dropped by $6.6 billion to to $2,562.3 billion, after having dropped $11 billion in November. Both numbers were lower than consensus.

Confirming our expectations that the government's stupid idea of forcing consumers to borrow is, well, stupid, the latest release from the Federal Reserve indicates that consumer credit for December has in fact dropped by $6.6 billion to to $2,562.3 billion, after having dropped $11 billion in November. Both numbers were lower than consensus.

Curious note: the US Oil Fund, which is an ETF, holds 20% of the outstanding March futures contracts, and these have to roll by the end of NYMEX trading today from March to April. The ETF holds 81,050 March contracts as of February 5 according to its website, which is 4x the amount it held in December. It is possible that the 1-2nd months contango could exhibit some very odd behavior today as USO rolls. The only way the contango won't explode is if there are buyers on the other side of the trade.

For a good overview of Obama's first month on the job:

http://futuremd.blogspot.com/2009/02/worst-week.html

The S&P will likely hit 880 today. Based on a conservative 2009 S&P earnings projection of 40, this implies a 22x forward multiple, which is a realistic 80% premium to the past 130 years' historical average of 12x. If only the economy could now just jump right to 2017 when the depression is hopefully over and the mutiple has some sort of vaguely remote credibility.

Just saying.

Moody's just laid down the law and downgraded 12 classes, or $2.4 billion worth, of Bank of Countrywide Lynch's CMBS 2006-6 Series (that's Bank of America for you Bono fans)

Warren Buffett's rating agency said the reasons for the downgrade were "higher expected losses for the pool resulting from increased leverage, reduced debt service coverage, and anticipated losses from loans in special servicing. Moody's also affirmed nine classes."

Moody's just laid down the law and downgraded 12 classes, or $2.4 billion worth, of Bank of Countrywide Lynch's CMBS 2006-6 Series (that's Bank of America for you Bono fans)

Warren Buffett's rating agency said the reasons for the downgrade were "higher expected losses for the pool resulting from increased leverage, reduced debt service coverage, and anticipated losses from loans in special servicing. Moody's also affirmed nine classes."

Despite Target stock being down only 9.6% in January, Bill Ackman got 4x the beating as he was using options instead of stock to express his bullish bet. Pershing Square IV, which is how The Target fund is formally known, is down a whopping 89.5% since inception.

We used to be huge fans of president Palmer, so we are very troubled by the fact that instead of standing for all that is shady in CTU's interrogation techniques and making sure Jack Bauer lives yet another season, he keeps on steadfastly peddling Allstate's insurance business.

We used to be huge fans of president Palmer, so we are very troubled by the fact that instead of standing for all that is shady in CTU's interrogation techniques and making sure Jack Bauer lives yet another season, he keeps on steadfastly peddling Allstate's insurance business.

You were expecting an upgrade? Only Dick Bové has good things to say worthless piles of toxic asset heaps these days.

The report below.

Fitch Ratings-New York-06 February 2009: Fitch Ratings has downgraded the following ratings for Citigroup Inc. (Citi):

--Individual to 'C/D' from 'C'

--Preferred to 'BB' from 'BBB'.

Another really scary tidbit - first the fate of the CMBS market in the U.S. lies on Moody's not so broad shoulders, now, according to Barclays, the future of the $1 trillion covered bond market in Europe is about to depend on the shoddy analysis of S&P analysts. European covered bonds which date back to 18th-century Prussia, are Europe’s main source of funding for home lenders and have been promoted by the U.S. Treasury as a way of boosting the mortgage market.